This invention relates to customer relationship management and to customer contact centers.
A customer contact center typically must balance the quality of service that it provides against the cost of providing such service. When personalized service is needed, an automatic call distribution system typically connects a customer to a contact center agent who has the skills that are needed to service the customer. The agent serves one customer at a time. This personalized treatment generally leads to a high quality of service, with the main limitation on the quality of service being the number of available agents, but it is very expensive. To reduce costs, many contact centers offer some form of automated self-service, such as an interactive voice response (IVR) system, to customers. Each customer is connected to a separate port of the IVR system for service. The cost of providing service via the IVR system is generally substantially lower, but a desirable quality of service is not always achieved, as the IVR system is not as flexible and responsive as a human agent. Moreover, some customers are reluctant to use such systems.
This invention is directed to solving these and other problems and disadvantages of the prior art. Generally according to the invention, a plurality (a batch) of customers are simultaneously connected to and serviced by a resource such as an agent or an IVR port. According to one aspect of the invention, in a customer contact center where customer""s communications are distributed for servicing among resources based on skills needed by the communications and possessed by the resources, an improvement comprises responding to a plurality of the communications needing a same said skill by connecting the plurality of the communications for servicing simultaneously to one said resource. According to another aspect of the invention, an automated communications distribution (ACD) system distributes customers"" communications for servicing among resources based on skills needed by the communications and possessed by the resource, and responds to a plurality of the communications needing a same said skill by connecting the plurality of the communications for servicing simultaneously to one said resource having the skill. According to yet another aspect of the invention, a method of servicing customers"" communications in a customer contact center comprises distributing customers"" communications for servicing among resources based on skills needed by the communications and possessed by the resources, and in response to a plurality of the communications needing a same said skill, connecting the plurality of the communications for servicing simultaneously to one of said resources having said skill.
Although the invention may not be appropriate for use in all customer service applications, it is particularly useful in situations where the communication primarily involves dissemination of information by the resource to the customer with limited customer-to-resource interaction. Also, for scenarios where personalized service is prohibitively expensive but automated self-service leads to customer dissatisfaction and defections, this approach may offer an effective compromise. For those applications to which it is suited, the invention provides a level of personalized service at a dramatically reduced cost. For example, an application that allows an agent to effectively handle three customers per batch is estimated to cut total cost per contact by around 50%.
While the invention has been characterized in terms of method, it also encompasses apparatus that performs the method. The apparatus preferably includes an effectorxe2x80x94any entity that effects the corresponding step, unlike a meansxe2x80x94for each step. The invention further encompasses any computer-readable medium containing instructions which, when executed in a computer, cause the computer to perform the method steps.
These and other features and advantages of the invention will become more apparent from a consideration of an illustrative embodiment of the invention taken together with the drawing.